Unfortunate Transmigrator

6

Short-Term Planning

I

Hao Zhen, Tian Jin, and Duo Lan spent about an hour discussing their options, and they ultimately came to the conclusion that for the time being, the best plan of action would be to keep Ke Li’s attempt to assassinate Tian Jin under Du Qing’s orders a secret. They’d return to the sect, claim that they had gotten ambushed by a monster—a creature with magical powers—and that Ke Li was eaten by it.

Tian Jin, who knew Du Qing best, was certain that if they did this, Du Qing would first try to find out what actually happened in the mission, sounding them out before making any moves. This would give them time—more specifically, Tian Jin and Duo Lan—to grow stronger, as Tian Jin and Duo Lan were both confident that they’d be able to take on Du Qing soon enough.

It wasn’t as good a plan as Hao Zhen had hoped, but it was the only one they had managed to come up with, and it also solved another problem: what to do with Ke Li’s corpse. If Ke Li had died, they’d be expected to return with his corpse—something they couldn’t do, considering doing so would reveal that Ke Li had died after being stabbed through the chest by a sword. If they said that a monster had swallowed Ke Li, however, then they’d have an explanation for why they didn’t have the corpse.

Now, they only needed to come up with a reason why, after eating Ke Li, the monster had left them alone. Saying that they had killed the monster wasn’t an option. If they went with that explanation, then the elders would question why they hadn’t brought the corpse of the monster back. Not to mention they'd have to place Ke Li’s corpse inside the imaginary monster's stomach for their story to make sense, which defeated the purpose of having a monster eat it.

“Maybe we can just say that it got satisfied after eating Ke Li, then left us alone because it wasn’t hungry anymore?” Tian Jin said, though judging by his expression, he didn’t seem to put much stock in his suggestion.

“I don’t think they’d buy that. Too convenient.” Hao Zhen furrowed his brow. “I can’t think of anything better, though.”

If they couldn’t figure this last bit out, then everything they had done so far would be for nothing. He didn’t think they’d be able to come up with a perfect lie, but they at least had to make sure there weren’t any glaring problems with their version of the events.

“Hmm.” Duo Lan, who had been quiet for a while, suddenly looked up. “What if we say that Ke Li killed the monster after being swallowed? We can say that after the monster ate him, it suddenly exploded, and we assumed that Ke Li had used an explosion talisman to take it out with him, destroying both of their bodies in the process.”

“That… That could work,” Hao Zhen said, looking at her with surprise. He hadn’t really been expecting a good idea from her. So far, she had contributed little to the discussion, and she didn’t particularly strike him as the thinking type. “I think there might be a problem, though. The elders could—and probably will—ask for proof. I’ve never used an explosion talisman before, but I don’t think one would be able to completely obliterate a monster to the point of leaving nothing behind.”

He hadn’t even known explosion talismans were a thing, but he wasn’t really surprised they existed, either, considering he had a fireball talisman in his pocket.

“I know,” Duo Lan said, nodding her head. “I have something I think we can use. What we need is a third-level red-grade monster big enough to swallow a man whole, right?” Her spatial ring flashed, and a horn appeared in her hand. “Here. The horn of a radiant sun tiger.”

Duo Lan held up the horn for them to see. It was bright red, roughly the length of a forearm, and unless Hao Zhen was seeing things, it was giving off a soft red glow, even though he wasn’t using Spiritual Sight.

Hao Zhen stared at it blankly, then looked back at Duo Lan. He didn’t really know what to think. What Duo Lan did just now had caught him completely off-guard and raised a couple of questions. “How… How exactly did you get your hands on that?”

A third-level red-grade monster was strong enough to fight a group of third-level redsouls. This wasn’t the kind of material an outer disciple could get her hands on—even if it was someone like Duo Lan, who was second only to Tian Jin.

““Through my connections in the Alchemy Division,” Duo Lan said, shrugging. She would have been more convincing if she wasn’t trying to avoid eye contact. “It’s an ingredient of one of the pills I’ve been trying to concoct.”

She was clearly lying—or, at the very least, she wasn’t being entirely honest. For a moment, Hao Zhen considered calling her out on it, but ultimately decided against it. He didn’t like secrets, but knowing Duo Lan, trying to get the truth out of her could very well turn very ugly very quickly, and now wasn’t the time for infighting. Not over this, at least.

“It looks like we have a plan, then,” Hao Zhen finally said. “While we were searching for deathpetal orchids and shadowseeker daffodils, we were ambushed by a radiant sun tiger. It swallowed Ke Li whole before any of us could react, and then, moments later, it exploded, only leaving behind that horn. How does that sound?”

“I think it works,” Tian Jin said. Duo Lan also expressed her agreement, though that was expected, as she was the one who had suggested this story in the first place. They then spent some time getting their stories straight, making sure they all knew what the monster in question looked and sounded like.

With that out of the way, Hao Zhen decided to address a matter that had been worrying him for a while now. “What about Ke Li’s spatial ring?” As he said that, he took the ring out of his pocket and showed it to them. “Would a spatial ring normally survive an explosion talisman?”

Tian Jin looked unsure, but Duo Lan nodded her head. “Definitely,” she said. “And we would be expected to bring it back to the sect with us and hand it over to the elders.”

Hao Zhen stared at the ring in his hand and took in a deep breath. He had been dreading that answer.

“Then I guess there’s no other choice,” Hao Zhen said, looking at the ring with regret before returning it to his pocket. He glanced at Tian Jin, wondering whether he’d say anything or ask for the spatial ring, but the other boy had no reaction, seemingly having no problems with Hao Zhen holding onto the spatial ring for now.

“One last thing,” Hao Zhen said. “What should we do about the jade slip?” He didn’t need to specify which one it was.

At that, Duo Lan reached into the side pocket of her robe and took out the jade slip with Du Qing’s and Ke Li’s deal. She had been holding onto it ever since he tossed it to her right after she arrived at the clearing. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Didn’t you say that it was useless, anyway?”

“Currently, yes, but maybe it might come in handy in the future,” Hao Zhen said. “What’s clear is that we can’t keep it in Ke Li’s spatial ring, in case the elders decide to go through its contents.”

“I’d like to keep it,” Tian Jin said, looking at the jade slip intently. Most likely, if Hao Zhen hadn’t brought up this matter, Tian Jin would have done so.

Duo Lan shrugged and tossed him the jade slip, which disappeared a moment later, most likely stored away in Tian Jin’s spatial ring.

“Is there any chance of the elders going through our belongings, though?” Hao Zhen asked. “Because if there is any chance of that happening, I don’t think keeping it on your person will be a good idea.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Duo Lan said. “Elders aren’t allowed to search the spatial rings of disciples—for several reasons. There are plenty of rules regarding that.”

That was incredibly convenient, Hao Zhen had to admit, but not unexpected, given everything that had happened so far. Tian Jin also confirmed that those rules did exist, revealing that back when he had been a suspect in the murder of an outer disciple—a story that everyone in the Outer Court knew about—the elders refused to search his spatial ring for evidence even though he had offered to show it to them.

With that, there was nothing else left to plan for the time being, so they made their way over to Ke Li’s corpse to get his magical cloud so that they could return to the sect. Kneeling down next to the corpse, Tian Jin pulled back Ke Li’s sleeves, revealing a red bracelet on the corpse’s forearm—the bracelet form of Ke Li’s magical cloud.

“What happened to his skill seed, anyway? Did you already get it?” Duo Lan asked offhandedly as she looked down at the corpse with visible distaste.

“Oh. Right. I almost forgot,” Tian Jin said.

“Skill seed?” Hao Zhen asked.

Besides cultivating, cultivators also sought to deepen their comprehension of the heavenly laws: the laws that governed reality. If a cultivator’s comprehension of a heavenly law reached a high enough level, they would be able to derive a spiritual skill from it—or at least that was what Hao Zhen had heard. He didn’t have a spiritual skill, nor had he ever tried to comprehend a heavenly law with the purpose of acquiring one. That wasn’t exactly the kind of thing outer disciples usually bothered with, as most of their time was already taken up by trying to grasp their cultivation method.

Hao Zhen knew even less about skill seeds, only that they were supposedly the materialization of spiritual skills. Everything Hao Zhen knew about spiritual skills and skill seeds had been told to him by other outer disciples, and those that he had talked with hadn’t known all that much, either.

“You don’t know?” Duo Lan raised an eyebrow.

Tian Jin looked up, turning to Hao Zhen. “When a cultivator with a spiritual skill dies, their skill seed leaves their soul, manifesting outside their body as a skill seed,” he said, taking it upon himself to offer an explanation. He then pushed Ke Li’s corpse to the side slightly, displacing it. Something red rolled down from underneath the corpse, and Tian Jin swiftly grabbed it.

Tian Jin stood up and held out the red object for Hao Zhen to see. It was a small red orb. “This is a skill seed. If you assimilate it into your crux, you’ll get Ke Li’s spiritual skill, Ethereal String Puppetry. And unlike spatial rings, skill seeds are pretty fragile, so we can claim it was destroyed in the explosion.”

Hao Zhen narrowed his eyes at the small orb. A spiritual skill… that could definitely come in handy. However, the one who had killed Ke Li was Tian Jin, so it technically belonged to him. Just like the spatial ring in his pocket.

As if he had read his thoughts, Tian Jin tossed him the skill seed. “You can have it,” Tian Jin said, shrugging. “I already have one, after all.”

“I…” Hao Zhen looked at the skill seed, then at Tian Jin. “Is it safe, though? Couldn’t the elders notice that I suddenly gained a spiritual skill—the same one as Ke Li, at that?”

“Only if you use it,” Tian Jin assured him. “It doesn’t matter how powerful you are—you can’t see inside another cultivator’s crux with Spiritual Sight.”

That explained why Tian Jin had managed to keep his spiritual skill a secret so far. It was also extremely convenient, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Ke Li’s spiritual skill was Ethereal String Puppetry, right?” Duo Lan suddenly interjected, to which Tian Jin nodded. Turning to Hao Zhen, she said, “That’s one of the three signature skills of the Blazing Light Sect, the other two being Blazing Sun Aura and Radiant Light Field. Ethereal String Puppetry doesn’t have the defensive properties of Radiant Light Field, nor the offensive power of Blazing Sun Aura, but I think it’s a very useful spiritual skill. It’s particularly suitable for those who aren’t all that good at fighting.”

“She’s right,” Tian Jin said. “I think you should take it. Skill seeds aren’t easy to come by, and considering we don’t know what Du Qing will do, the more powerful you are, the better you can protect yourself. Just bear in mind that as a redsoul, you can only have one spiritual skill, and after you assimilate a skill seed, there’s no going back. The only way to get rid of it would be to destroy your crux and start cultivating all over again. You’ll also have to keep the fact that you have a spiritual skill a secret until you can come up with an excuse for having it.”

Hao Zhen silently listened to their advice, all the while staring at the small red orb in his hand in contemplation. Only inner disciples could exchange contribution points for spiritual skills and read skill scriptures, so Hao Zhen didn’t think he’d have another opportunity like this anytime soon.

Ethereal String Puppetry seemed to work best against enemies who were either at the same level as the user or lower, so it was hardly the ideal skill, but Hao Zhen reckoned that it was better than nothing. Considering that they’d still have to deal with Du Qing further down the line, he’d need all the power he could get, just like Tian Jin had said. He couldn’t afford to be picky right now.

He also couldn’t help but think of yesterday—how Ke Li had almost managed to kill Tian Jin using his spiritual skill, the same spiritual skill he now held in his hands in the form of a skill seed.

The more he thought about it, the more certain he became. Finally, he came to a decision.

“I’ll assimilate it.”